The ability to reason about how things were made is a pervasive aspect of how humans make sense of physical objects. Such reasoning is useful for a range of everyday tasks, from assembling a piece of furniture to making a sandwich and knitting a sweater. What enables people to reason in this way even about novel objects, and how do people draw upon prior experience with an object to continually refine their understanding of how to create it? To explore (...) these questions, we developed a virtual task environment to investigate how people come up with step‐by‐step procedures for recreating block towers whose composition was not readily apparent, and analyzed how the procedures they used to build them changed across repeated attempts. Specifically, participants (N = 105) viewed 2D silhouettes of eight unique block towers in a virtual environment simulating rigid‐body physics, and aimed to reconstruct each one in less than 60 s. We found that people built each tower more accurately and quickly across repeated attempts, and that this improvement reflected both group‐level convergence upon a tiny fraction of all possible viable procedures, as well as error‐dependent updating across successive attempts by the same individual. Taken together, our study presents a scalable approach to measuring consistency and variation in how people infer solutions to physical assembly problems. (shrink)

Orthodoxy has it that knowledge is a composite of belief and non-mental factors. However, Timothy Williamson suggests that orthodoxy implies that the concept of belief is acquired before the concept of knowledge, whereas developmental data suggest the reverse. More recently, Jennifer Nagel reviews the psychological evidence, building a psychological case that the concept of knowledge emerges prior to belief. I assess the psychological state of the art and find support for the opposite conclusion. Overall the empirical evidence supports the (...) orthodox view that the concept of belief is prior to the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914 – 1969) and Georg Henrik von Wright (1916 – 2003) both attended a conference in England sometime in the spring of 1956, after which they corresponded on Anselm’s ontological argument. Prior had at the conference presented a formal treatment of the ontological argument. Based upon notes from the Prior archive at the Bodleian Library, and correspondence with von Wright, we here presents Prior’s and von Wrights’ discussion of Anselm’s argument in light of (...) Prior’s published, as well as unpublished writings on the ontological argument. Three versions of the ontological argument from Prior’s unpublished as well as published papers is presented: a non-modal, an argument from possible existence and finally a modal version. While Prior dismissed the first on the basis of a meta-theorem for proof in argumentation, the second on the basis of a fallacious commutation of operators, he argued that a valid version of the ontological argument can be proven from the distinctive S5 thesis of Lewis modal logic. While Prior gave reasons for a rejection of those distinct S5 thesis, in favour of Lewis S4 system, he also provided a novel argument in favour of accepting the S5 thesis for necessity and possibility. Finally we relate Prior’s work to Plantinga (1974) and consider objections raised by Oppy (2012) and Gale (2007) toward the modal versions of the ontological argument. (shrink)

Galileo claimed inconsistency in the Aristotelian dogma concerning falling bodies and stated that all bodies must fall at the same rate. However, there is an empirical situation where the speeds of falling bodies are proportional to their weights; and even in vacuo all bodies do not fall at the same rate under terrestrial conditions. The reason for the deficiency of Galileo’s reasoning is analyzed, and various physical scenarios are described in which Aristotle’s claim is closer to the truth than is (...) Galileo’s. The purpose is not to reinstate Aristotelian physics at the expense of Galileo and Newton, but rather to provide evidence in support of the verdict that empirical knowledge does not come from prior philosophy.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Aristotle; Galileo; Thought experiments; Falling bodies. (shrink)

Two of the probabilistic measures of coherence discussed in this paper take probabilistic dependence into account and so depend on prior probabilities in a fundamental way. An example is given which suggests that this prior-dependence can lead to potential problems. Another coherence measure is shown to be independent of prior probabilities in a clearly defined sense and consequently is able to avoid such problems. The issue of prior-dependence is linked to the fact that the first two (...) measures can be understood as measures of coherence as striking agreement, while the third measure represents coherence as agreement. Thus, prior (in)dependence can be used to distinguish different conceptions of coherence. (shrink)

Logical realism, by Arthur Norman Prior understood as the view that logic is not about language but about reality, is a consistent and strong tenet in all of Prior's philosophical work. Recent disc...

ABSTRACT Objectives There is little research on moral uncertainties and distress of palliative and hospice care providers (PHCPs) working in jurisdictions anticipating legalising voluntary assisted dying (VAD). This study examines the perception and anticipated concerns of PHCPs in providing VAD in the State of Queensland, Australia prior to legalisation of the practice in 2021. The findings help inform strategies to facilitate training and support the health and well-being of healthcare workers involved in VAD. Design The study used a qualitative (...) approach to examine and analyse the perception and anticipated concerns of PHCPs regarding challenges of providing assisted dying in Queensland. Fourteen PHCPs were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy to obtain a broad representation of perspectives including work roles, geographical locations and workplace characteristics. Data were collected via one in-depth interview per participant. The transcripts were coded for patterns and themes using an inductive analysis approach following the tradition of Grounded Theory. Setting The study was conducted in hospital, hospice, community and residential aged care settings in Queensland, Australia. These included public and private facilities, secular and faith-based facilities, and regional/rural and urban facilities. Participants Interviews were conducted with fourteen PHCPs: 10 nurses and 4 physicians; 11 female and 3 male. The median number of years of palliative care practice was 17, ranging from 2 to 36 years. For inclusion, participants had to be practising palliative and hospice care providers. Results PHCPs are divided on whether VAD should be considered part of palliative care. Expectations of moral distress and uncertainty about practising VAD were identified in five areas: handling requests, assessing patient capacity, arranging patient transfers and logistical issues, managing unsuccessful attempts, and dealing with team conflicts and stigma. Conclusions The possibility of having to practise VAD causes moral distress and uncertainty for some PHCPs. Procedural clarity can address some uncertainties; moral and psychological distress, however, remains a source of tension that needs support to ensure ongoing care of both patients and PHCPs. The introduction of VAD post-legalisation may present an occasion for further moral education and development of PHCPs. (shrink)

Hume’s celebrated argument concerning miracles, and an 18th century criticism of it put forward by Richard Price, is here interpreted in terms of the modern controversy over the base-rate fallacy. When considering to what degree we should trust a witness, should we or should we not take into account the prior probability of the event reported? The reliability of the witness (’Pr’(says e/e)) is distinguished from the credibility of the testimony (’Pr’(e/says e)), and it is argued that Hume, as (...) a good proto-Bayesian, argued that the credibility of the testimony should be calculated in terms of both the reliability of the witness and the prior probability of the event reported. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debate in the philosophy of time draws on two, fairly distinct, sources: physics and philosophical logic. This paper focuses on the latter, and, in particular, on representatives of the dominant views: ‘tenseless’ (Frege) and ‘tensed’ (Prior). Their rival accounts of the sense of differently tensed talk are compared. It is argued that while they share preconceptions that might be questioned, Prior's appeal to relief that a pain is over may, properly understood, contribute to a philosophical understanding (...) of time in a way that is largely precluded by widespread, and challengeable, ideas about the character of language and logic: ideas that fail properly to acknowledge the sense in which talk is in time. (shrink)

'Wolterstorff (2009) provides an important explanation to the question: What caused the surprising resurgence in philosophical theology that has occurred over the last 50 years—a resurgence that rivals its zenith in the Middle Ages? This article supplements that with a more fine-grained answer to the question. Recent discoveries in Arthur Norman Prior’s correspondence with J.J.C Smart and Mary Prior, between November 1953 and August 1954 on the possibility of necessary existence, demonstrates the importance of Prior’s discussion of (...) the Barcan formulae in Time and Modality (1957) for the resurgence of analytic theology. The correspondence establishes that Prior’s discovery of tense-logic, and his discussion of quantified tense-logic constituted the perfect opportunity for him to challenge key anti-metaphysical assumptions in analytic philosophy, from which four important consequences can be drawn for the resurgence of philosophical theology. First, Prior’s discussion of time and existence challenged the idea of Russell (1945) and Findlay (1948) on the logical status of a necessary existing being. Second, the discussion challenged the Analytic school’s view of analysis and gave Prior the opportunity to introduce a different perspective on the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Third, it gave Prior a good opportunity to demonstrate that the then-prevailing attitude towards medieval logic was wrong. Fourth, it made it possible for Prior to demonstrate that the highly surprising metaphysical conclusions of quantified tense-logic brings modern logicians into a discussion with the theologically minded medieval logicians. (shrink)

It is proposed that experts are able to integrate prior contextual knowledge with emergent visual information to make complex predictive judgments about the world around them, often under heightened levels of uncertainty and extreme time constraints. However, limited knowledge exists about the impact of anxiety on the use of such contextual priors when forming our decisions. We provide a novel insight into the combined impact of contextual priors and anxiety on anticipation in soccer. Altogether, 12 expert soccer players were (...) required to predict the actions of an oncoming opponent while viewing life-sized video simulations of 2-versus-2 defensive scenarios. Performance effectiveness and processing efficiency were measured under four conditions: no contextual priors about the action tendencies of the opponent and low anxiety ; no CP and high anxiety ; CP and LA; CP and HA. The provision of contextual priors did not affect processing efficiency, but it improved performance effectiveness... (shrink)

This paper takes up David Armitage’s suggestion that historians should be alert to the various forms which international thinking took in the early modern period. Specifically, it concentrates on Grotius’s contribution to the effort to conceptualise the relationship of church and state, and to settle their relative jurisdictions. It argues that this effort can (and should) be read as part of a process of establishing a set of norms concerning the power of states. However, where some scholars have argued (...) that an important chapter in the emergence of the modern state lies in the assertion of civil dominance over clerical power, this paper argues that a doctrine of civil religion formed the basis of an emerging logic of Protestant politics. (shrink)

Acts are functions from states of nature into finite-support distributions over a set of ‘deterministic outcomes’. We characterize preference relations over acts which have a numerical representation by the functional J(f)=min>∫u∘ f dP¦PϵC where f is an act, u is a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility over outcomes, and C is a closed and convex set of finitely additive probability measures on the states of nature. In addition to the usual assumptions on the preference relation as transitivity, completeness, continuity and monotonicity, we (...) assume uncertainty aversion and certainty-independence. The last condition is a new one and is a weakening of the classical independence axiom: It requires that an act f is preferred to an act g if and only if the mixture of f and any constant act h is preferred to the same mixture of g and h. If non-degeneracy of the preference relation is also assumed, the convex set of priors C is uniquely determined. Finally, a concept of independence in case of a non-unique prior is introduced. (shrink)

There is an important but unorthodox view within the philosophy of action that when it comes to certain mental actions of a person—her decisions and choices—these actions cannot be caused by her beliefs and desires or by any prior event or state of her at all. The reason for this, it is said, is that there is something in the very nature of a person’s decisions and choices that entails that they cannot be caused in this way. The arguments (...) for this view, however, have largely gone unexamined. This paper, therefore, critically examines the arguments that have been proposed for this view. It concludes, however, that they are unpersuasive. There is, as yet, no good reason offered as to why we should think that decisions and choices must be uncaused by prior events or states of the agent. (shrink)

It has often been claimed that (i) Aristotle's expression 'protasis' means 'premiss' in syllogistic contexts and (ii) cannot refer to the conclusion of a syllogism in the Prior Analytics. In this essay we produce and defend a counter-example to these two claims. We argue that (i) the basic meaning of the expression is 'proposition' and (ii) while it is often used to refer to the premisses of a syllogism, in Prior Analytics 1.29, 45b4-8 it is used to refer (...) to the conclusion of a syllogism. In our view, the best explanation of Aristotle's use of the expression 'protasis' is that it means proposition throughout but is frequently used without change of meaning (in certain specific contexts) to refer to the premisses from which a conclusion follows. In Prior Analytics 1.29, 45b4-8 he uses 'protasis' to refer to the conclusion when he needs a single expression to refer to both the conclusion and one of the premisses of the syllogism that constitutes the core of a syllogism through the impossible. If we are correct, we have shown that the view that the expression 'the final protasis' in EN 7.3, 1147b9ff must mean 'the final premiss' and so cannot refer to the conclusion of the relevant syllogism is mistaken. (shrink)

This study investigates differences in the ethical perceptions of undergraduate students in a number of computer-related situations. One hundred and eight students of UK/Irish and Malaysian backgrounds were asked to evaluate the ethical implications of eighteen computer-related scenarios. Tests for differences were conducted across four homogenetically distinct groupings – cultural background, gender, previous formal ethics education and incremental formal computer education. The results of the tests carried out indicate that the ethical perceptions of the students in computer-related situations differ most (...) significantly on the basis of their cultural backgrounds. Observed differences across the other three variables were minimal. (shrink)

This study examined the effect of a prior bout of exercise on implicit cognition. Specifically, we examined whether a prior bout of moderate intensity exercise affected performance on a statistical learning task in healthy adults. A total of 42 participants were allocated to one of three conditions—a control group, a group that exercised for 15 min prior to the statistical learning task, and a group that exercised for 30 min prior to the statistical learning task. The (...) participants in the exercise groups cycled at 60% of their respective V˙O2max. Each group demonstrated significant statistical learning, with similar levels of learning among the three groups. Contrary to previous research that has shown that a prior bout of exercise can affect performance on explicit cognitive tasks, the results of the current study suggest that the physiological stress induced by moderate-intensity exercise does not affect implicit cognition as measured by statistical learning. (shrink)

Blair's account, like the intelligence field in general, treats many distinct constructs as if they were practically interchangeable – this is not self-evident. Paradigm integration and rationalization of redundant nomenclature are important for the continued development of understanding. The prior task is to demonstrate where synonymity of constructs across paradigms occurs, and where it fails. We present arguments why this is the case. (Published Online April 5 2006).

This article investigates and provides guidelines to the negative impact of mahadi on the Basotho youth before they may marry. It is important to note that marriage is one of the main parts of the life cycle amongst the Basotho and not only joins a man and a woman together, but is also considered to unite the members of the respective families of the married couple into one family. This union of two families comes into effect when the process of (...) negotiation of the mahadi is initiated. The negotiation for mahadi is, in other words, the first stage of bonding two families together. In the hope of gaining a better understanding and results, the writer searched for a qualitative method to conduct the research. (shrink)

This book introduces the reader to ethics by examining a current and important debate. During the last fifty years the orthodox position in ethics has been a broadly non-cognitivist one: since there are no moral facts, moral remarks are best understood, not as attempting to describe the world, but as having some other function - such as expressing the attitudes or preferences of the speaker. In recent years this position has been increasingly challenged by moral realists who maintain that there (...) are moral facts; there is a truth of the matter in ethics, which is independent of our views, and which we seek to discover. Unfortunately much of this interesting debate found in the work of McDowell, Wiggins, Putnam, Blackburn and others is not easily accessible to undergraduates. McNaughton presents many of the major issues in ethics by way of a clear exposition of both sides of this argument and assumes no prior knowledge of philosophy. Topics discussed include: moral observation, moral motivation, amoralism and wickedness, moral weakness, cultural relativism and utilitarianism. The book concludes that a convincing case can be made out for a radical form of moral realism in which moral virtue is found, not in the following of correct moral principles, but rather in the development of moral sensitivity. Moral Vision is a clear and engaged introduction to an important, and often troubling, debate. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology shows how the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from its very beginnings, seeks to find sense or meaning within nature, and how this quest calls for and develops into a radically new ontology. -/- David Morris first gives an illuminating analysis of sense, showing how it requires understanding nature as engendering new norms. He then presents innovative studies of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, revealing how these early works are oriented by the problem (...) of sense and already lead to difficulties about nature, temporality, and ontology that preoccupy Merleau-Ponty's later work. Morris shows how resolving these difficulties requires seeking sense through its appearance in nature, prior to experience—ultimately leading to radically new concepts of nature, time, and philosophy. -/- Merleau-Ponty's Developmental Ontology makes key issues in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy clear and accessible to a broad audience while also advancing original philosophical conclusions. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the puzzle animating the book that the recent wave of status research has left in its wake: Why do states appear to chase status so ferociously when the status rewards appear so ephemeral and perhaps illusionary? To address this puzzle, the chapter makes the theoretical case that states have varying degrees of leeway to develop and maintain hierarchical constructions of the world that are neither shared nor recognized by international audiences yet remain salient and have political effects (...) domestically. Consequently, governments can benefit from status-seeking in terms of legitimacy, without being beholden to international recognition. This has been overlooked because prior works tend to bracket the domestic audience, overstate the degree of intersubjective agreement about international status, and thereby understate the degree of interpretative agency located within domestic discourses. This discussion lays the groundwork for studying the theories of status used by actors within domestic politics. (shrink)

This chapter tackles head-on the puzzle of why states exert resources competing for international status when international recognition is seldom forthcoming and the gains from status are seemingly so ephemeral. To do so, it revisits a key case in IR’s status research: Britain’s tragic war with the Boer (1899–1902). The war has become a prime example of why the rewards from status-seeking are illusionary: the government treated victory as glorious even as the rest of the world remained unimpressed. Yet, by (...) tracing the government’s evolving status theories across three episodes prior to, during, and after the Boer War, the chapter illuminates how, rather than resulting from psychological illusion that duped Britain’s leaders, the government’s status narrative is better described as a sociological and above all political construction that the government had considerable interest in fostering. (shrink)

This chapter explores how international organizations can exert influence when lacking material carrots or sticks. Investigating Norway’s response to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking, the chapter argues that international rankings operate as “status Esperanto” that allow “foreign” theories of status to bypass the obstacles that usually hinder international agreement about the rules of international status competitions. However, tracing 19 years of the education policy highlights a more critical “reactivity,” hitherto overlooked by prior research. The process (...) of competing in the PISA rankings led several domestic groups to question the rules of the game and develop rival theories of educational status that spread to mainstream politics. This emergent resistance to the competition has undermined the potential for PISA to legitimate future policy reforms and highlights the importance of treating status competition as a discursively mediated process that is always susceptible to contestation from below. (shrink)

This chapter situates the book’s theoretical framework within the IR status literature. In so doing, it develops an ideal-typical account of status competition as a rule-governed competition for position whereby the relative performance of competitors is easily identifiable by virtue of the shared understanding of the rules of the game. While broadly consistent with prior research, the advantage of this ideal type is that it gives due emphasis to the rule-governed nature of status competition and the specific processual-relational logic (...) of action it produces. The key value added is that it defines status dynamics by their processual-relational logic rather than by either the motivation or the substance of the behavior. This typology thus lays the groundwork for solving one of the methodological riddles of the introduction: differentiating status competition from other types of state action and status-seeking without defining substance of the status hierarchy prior to analysis. (shrink)

This volume collects David Lyons' well-known essays on Mill's moral theory and includes an introduction which relates the essays to prior and subsequent philosophical developments. Like the author's Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford, 1965), the essays apply analytical methods to issues in normative ethics. The first essay defends a refined version of the beneficiary theory of rights against H.L.A. Hart's important criticisms. The central set of essays develops new interpretations of Mill's moral theory with the aim of (...) determining how far rights can be incorporated in a utilitarian framework. They Mill's analysis of moral concepts promises to accommodate the argumentative force of rights, and also provide a significant new reading of Mill's theory of liberty. The last essay argues that the promise of Mill's theory of justice cannot be fulfilled. Utilitarianism is unable to account for crucial features of moral rights, or even for the moral force of legal rights whose existence might be justified on utilitarian grounds. (shrink)

According to communitarian antiliberals, liberalism is fatally marred by a false metaphysics of the self. Liberalism, communitarians charge, regards the self as atomistic, isolated, presocial, ahistorical, “Cartesian,” Crusoeesque, essentially independent of other selves—in Michael Sandel's felicitous word, “unencumbered.” In reality, the self is constituted by relationships with others, hence by its contingent history. The self is fundamentally historical and social, and a true metaphysics of the self would, in the words of George Fletcher, take “relationships as logically prior to (...) the individual.” Sandel puts it thus: “Can we view ourselves as independent selves, independent in the sense that our identity is never attached to our aims and attachments? I do not think we can….”. (shrink)

This paper consider Prior's connective Tonk from a particular bilateralist perspective. I show that there is a natural perspective from which we can see Tonk and its ilk as perfectly well-defined pieces of vocabulary; there is no need for restrictions to bar things like Tonk.

Consequentialism, many philosophers have claimed, asks too much of us to be a plausible ethical theory. Indeed, the theory's severe demandingness is often claimed to be its chief flaw. My thesis is that as we come to better understand this objection, we see that, even if it signals or tracks the existence of a real problem for Consequentialism, it cannot itself be a fundamental problem with the view. The objection cannot itself provide good reason to break with Consequentialism, because it (...) must presuppose prior and independent breaks with the view. The way the objection measures the demandingness of an ethical theory reflects rather than justifies being in the grip of key anti-Consequentialist conclusions. We should reject Consequentialism independently of the Objection or not at all. Thus, we can reduce by one the list of worrisome fundamental complaints against Consequentialism. (shrink)

The purpose of the two studies reported here was to develop an integrated model of the scientific reasoning process. Subjects were placed in a simulated scientific discovery context by first teaching them how to use an electronic device and then asking them to discover how a hitherto unencountered function worked. To do this task, subjects had to formulate hypotheses based on their prior knowledge, conduct experiments, and evaluate the results of their experiments. In the first study, using 20 adult (...) subjects, we identified two main strategies that subjects used to generate new hypotheses. One strategy was to search memory and the other was to generalize from the results of previous experiments. We described the former group as searching an hypothesis space, and the latter as searching an experiment space. In a second study, with 10 adults, we investigated how subjects search the hypothesis space by instructing them to state all the hypotheses that they could think of prior to conducting any experiments. Following this phase, subjects were then allowed to conduct experiments. Subjects who could not think of the correct rule in the hypothesis generation phase discovered the correct rule only by generalizing from the results of experiments in the experimental phase.Both studies provide support for the view that scientific reasoning can be characterized as search in two problem spaces. By extending Simon and Lea's (1974) Generalized Rule Inducer, we present a general model of Scientific Discovery as Dual Search (SDDS) that shows how search in two problem spaces (an hypothesis space and an experiment space) shapes hypothesis generation, experimental design, and the evaluation of hypotheses. The model also shows how these processes interact with each other. Finally, we interpret earlier findings about the psychology of scientific reasoning in terms of the SDDS model. (shrink)

Prior work has established that laypeople do not consistently treat moral questions as being objectively true or as merely true relative to different perspectives. Rather, these metaethical judgments vary dramatically across moral issues and in response to different social influences. We offer a potential explanation by examining how objectivists and relativists are evaluated in different contexts. We provide evidence for a novel account of metaethical judgments as signaling tolerance or intolerance of disagreement. The social implications of signaling tolerance or (...) intolerance in different contexts may motivate different metaethical judgments. Study 1 finds that relativists are perceived as more tolerant, empathic, having superior moral character, and as more desirable as social partners than objectivists. Study 2 replicates these findings with a within-participants design and also shows that objectivists are perceived as more morally serious than relativists. Study 3 examines evaluations of objectivists and relativists regarding concrete moral issues, finding these results vary across situations of moral agreement and disagreement. Study 4 finds that participants' metaethical stances likewise vary when responding in the way they think would make a person who agrees or disagrees with them evaluate them more positively. However, in Study 5, we find no effect on metaethical judgment of telling participants they will be evaluated by a person who agrees or disagrees with them, which suggests either a failure to induce reputational concerns or a more limited influence of reputational considerations on metaethical judgments, despite strong effects on social evaluation. (shrink)

The central problem for normative ethics is the conflict between a consequentialist view--that morality requires promoting the good of all--and a belief that the rights of the individual place significant constraints on what may be done to help others. Standard interpretations see Kant as rejecting all forms of consequentialism, and defending a theory which is fundamentally duty-based and agent-centered. Certain actions, like sacrificing the innocent, are categorically forbidden. In this original and controversial work, Cummiskey argues that there is no defensible (...) basis for this view, that Kant's own arguments actually entail a consequentialist conclusion. But this new form of consequentialism which follows from Kant's theories has a distinctly Kantian tone. The capacity of rational action is prior to the value of happiness; thus providing justification for the view that rational nature is more important than mere pleasures and pains. (shrink)

A Linguistic Analysis of Prior, Quine, and Searle on Propositional Attitudes, Martinich on Fictional Reference, Taglicht on the Active/Passive Mood Distinction in English, etc.

Given its clinical significance, horror should occupy a prominent place within emotion theory. However, conceptualizations of horror within psychological science are relatively underdeveloped and conceptually confused. Through conceptual analysis of the disparate literature on the emotion, we seek to establish horror as a qualitatively distinct mode of engagement with the world and to remedy its over-intellectualization, as evident in many prior accounts. Given its etymology, we first address horror's characteristic immobilization—at the level of stereotypical facial configuration and action readiness—before (...) analyzing horror's formal object and appraisal structure. In the process, we critique schema accounts of the emotion and argue for conceptualizing horror pre-reflectively by grounding it in appraised violations of the practical dynamics of social engagement. (shrink)

This is an introduction to the structure of sentences in human languages. It assumes no prior knowledge of linguistic theory and little of elementary grammar. It will suit students coming to syntactic theory for the first time either as graduates or undergraduates. It will also be useful for those in fields such as computational science, artificial intelligence, or cognitive psychology who need a sound knowledge of current syntactic theory.

Epistemic constitutivism (EC) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. (...) I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are ‘reason-giving’ only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what’s special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard-governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons. (shrink)

Arthur Norman Prior (1914-69) was a logician and philosopher from New Zealand who contributed crucially to the development of ‘non-standard’ logics, especially of the modal variety. His greatest achievement was the invention of modern temporal logic, worked out in close connection with modal logic. However, his work in logic had a much broader scope. He was also the founder of hybrid logic, and he made important contributions to deontic logic, modal logic, the theory of quantification, the nature of propositions (...) and the history of logic. In addition, he discussed questions of ethics, free will, and general theology. Prior’s philosophical works comprise about 200 titles. His earliest articles center on philosophical theology and historical studies of Scottish Reformed Theology. This led on to the publication of his first influential work on ethics: Logic and The Basis of Ethics (1949). With the invention of tense-logic in the early 1950s, his focus shifted to investigations into the syntax of tempo-modal logic leading to his seminal Time and Modality (1957), a volume derived from his John Locke Lectures in Oxford in 1956. Furthermore Prior, together with the Irish mathematician and logician C.A. Meredith (1904-76), made important early contributions to the semantics of possible worlds. Prior’s tense-logic provided a strong conceptual framework for problems pertaining to the philosophy of time. In Time and Modality, Prior discussed the philosophical implications of Ruth Barcan’s famous formulae for tense-logic, and in the 1960s he worked on the notion of the present. The most persistent problem running through Prior’s work is his study of the questions surrounding human freedom and divine foreknowledge, and more general philosophical problems emerging from this classical theological question. His thorough analysis of this problem, with the conceptual tools of tense-logic, received a crucial impetus from his correspondence with the young Saul Kripke, when the latter suggested the semantic tool of branching time to Prior. Prior’s development of two solutions based on branching time for the problem of future contingency, the Peircean and the Ockham solution, was most thoroughly developed in Past, Present and Future (1967), the most important work published by Prior. Characteristically for Prior’s methodological approach, the development of these two solutions were at the same time a development of two new systems of tense logic, and vice versa. One of Prior’s significant contributions to logic was his work on world propositions and instant propositions. In the course of developing these notions he also made one of the earliest formulations of hybrid logic. In Papers on Time and Tense (1968), he presented this idea in a more detailed manner in the context of his four grades of tense-logical involvement. (shrink)

In previous work, we have developed the idea that, in some disputes, speakers appear to use (rather than mention) a term in order to put forward views about how that term should be used. We call such disputes “metalinguistic negotiations”. Herman Cappelen objects that our model of metalinguistic negotiation makes implausible predictions about what speakers really care about, and what kinds of issues they would take to settle their disputes. We highlight a distinction (which we have emphasized in prior (...) work) between the question of which disagreements speakers have vs. which disagreements are immediately expressed in a given linguistic exchange. Once this distinction is clear, we can appreciate that speakers who are engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation (where certain issues in conceptual ethics are immediately expressed) can also disagree about other issues, including both other issues in conceptual ethics and “object-level” issues that aren’t about words or concepts. In many metalinguistic negotiations, speakers (we think correctly) care more about these other issues than they do about ones concerning the meaning of a word. Because of this, Cappelen’s objection fails to identify any data that challenge our model. (shrink)

We agree with Carruthers that evidence for metacognition in species lacking mindreading provides dramatic evidence in favor of the metacognition-is-prior account and against the mindreading-is-prior account. We discuss this existing evidence and explain why an evolutionary perspective favors the former account and poses serious problems for the latter account.

This paper offers a probabilistic treatment of the conditions for argument cogency as endorsed in informal logic: acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency. Treating a natural language argument as a reason-claim-complex, our analysis identifies content features of defeasible argument on which the RSA conditions depend, namely: change in the commitment to the reason, the reason’s sensitivity and selectivity to the claim, one’s prior commitment to the claim, and the contextually determined thresholds of acceptability for reasons and for claims. Results contrast with, (...) and may indeed serve to correct, the informal understanding and applications of the RSA criteria concerning their conceptual dependence, their function as update-thresholds, and their status as obligatory rather than permissive norms, but also show how these formal and informal normative approachs can in fact align. (shrink)